RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Paraguay: Nearly five million without electricity amid heat wave

    Source: United Press International

    “A massive blackout left nearly five million people without electricity in Paraguay amid a heat wave that pushed temperatures above 108 degrees Fahrenheit across large parts of the country and as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, according to local meteorological reports. The outage affected 90% of customers of the National Electricity Administration, or ANDE, the state-run company that supplies nearly the entire population of 6.4 million people. The interruption on Wednesday also disrupted drinking water services in urban areas due to reliance on electric pumping systems. Nearly 24 hours after the blackout, service had not been fully restored.” (02/19/26)

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/02/19/latam-Paraguay-blackout-heat-wave/2741771521283/

  • US regime pays about $160 million of the nearly $4 billion it owes the United Nations

    Source: Seattle Times

    “The United States has paid about $160 million of the nearly $4 billion it owes the United Nations, the U.N. said Thursday. The Trump administration’s payment is earmarked for the U.N.’s regular operating budget, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told The Associated Press. The U.N. has said the United States owes $2.196 billion to its regular budget, including $767 million for this year, and $1.8 billion for a separate budget for the far-flung U.N. peacekeeping operations. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last month that the world body faces ‘imminent financial collapse’ unless its financial rules are overhauled or all 193 member nations pay their dues, a message clearly directed at the United States.” (02/19/26)

    https://archive.is/zCdDO


  • In Defense of Sanctuary Cities

    Source: The Dispatch
    by Ilya Somin

    “Sanctuary cities and states have been a major focus of political conflict in the second Trump administration, perhaps even more than in the first. These jurisdictions refuse or severely limit assistance to federal efforts to detain and deport suspected illegal immigrants. Most only provide such assistance in cases involving undocumented migrants who have committed serious crimes. Regardless of the politics, the 10th Amendment protects sanctuary jurisdictions from compulsion by the federal government. And their policies are also well justified on moral and pragmatic grounds. This is particularly true at a time when many federal immigration enforcement efforts are cruel and illegal.” (02/19/26)

    https://archive.is/Ui3TQ

  • In Mamdani’s New York City, It’s “Democratic Socialists” vs. Workers

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “The premise of socialism is ‘worker control of the means of production,’ and the gig economy is far and away the most successful experiment in human history when it comes to achieving that. Gig workers own their tools. Gig workers set their own hours. Gig workers choose who they work for, where they work, and what kind of work they do. Gig workers even set their own salaries by accepting the individual tasks that meet their pay requirements and rejecting those that don’t. Mamdani and friends hate that worker control with a passion. To them, worker happiness and welfare only matter to the extent that they can claim credit for, and gain power from, that happiness and welfare. … if anyone, anywhere, somehow manages to make a living without Mamdani’s permission, why, that’s ‘exploitation.'” (02/19/26)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20384

  • Crime As Proxy For Disorder

    Source: Astral Codex Ten
    by Scott Alexander

    “[P]eople hate crime and think it’s going up. But actually, crime barely affects most people and is historically low. So what’s going on? In our discussion yesterday, many commenters proposed that the discussion about ‘crime’ was really about disorder. Disorder takes many forms, but its symptoms include litter, graffiti, shoplifting, tent cities, weird homeless people wandering about muttering to themselves, and people walking around with giant boom boxes shamelessly playing music at 200 decibels on a main street where people are trying to engage in normal activities. When people complain about these things, they risk getting called a racist or a ‘Karen.’ But when they complain about crime, there’s still a 50-50 chance that listeners will let them finish the sentence without accusing them of racism. … might this explain why people act like crime is rampant and increasing, even when it’s rare and going down?” (02/19/26)

    https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/crime-as-proxy-for-disorder

  • AI, Technology, and Work

    Source: EconLog
    by Jon Murphy

    “Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is upending professions as diverse as art, cinema, accounting, national defense, and education. Some even argue that AI will render almost all work obsolete. They say its ability to ‘think’ and accomplish tasks previously solely in the realm of human ability will mean that humans will not need to work; the machines will do everything for us. Whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing depends on the story one wants to tell.” (02/19/26)

    https://www.econlib.org/econlog/ai-technology-and-work

  • On Foreign Policy, AOC Is Just More of the Same

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Eldar Mamedov

    “lexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the Munich Security Conference to introduce herself to the world as a foreign policy thinker. She returned having demonstrated something else entirely: that the Democratic Party’s progressive star has absorbed the establishment’s worst ideas while shedding only its least popular rhetoric.” (02/19/26)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/on-foreign-policy-aoc-is-just-more-of-the-same/

  • 85 Seconds to My Own Midnight? Working for a Nuclear-Free Future

    Source: TomDispatch
    by Frida Berrigan

    “‘I’m not scared, you’re scared!’ is the repeated line in a children’s story we recently read to the kids at the Unitarian Universalist version of Sunday school I attend with my children. In that story, a scared bear and a brave rabbit, who (naturally!) are best friends, go on a hike together. Rabbit has to cajole and encourage Bear through every imaginable obstacle, but in the end (of course!) it’s Rabbit who gets stuck at the crucial moment and has to call on Bear for help. Bear (no surprise) sets aside his fears to rescue his friend and (tada!) finds new depths of bravery and adventurousness in the process. After we read the story, the kids worked together to build paths from blocks and Legos through the imagined obstacles in the story — a bridge over a rushing river, a path through a dark forest, a staircase up a steep mountain.” (02/19/26)

    https://tomdispatch.com/85-seconds-to-my-own-midnight/

  • Attacking Iran Would Be Monstrous

    Source: Eunomia
    by Daniel Larison

    “There is no cause for war. The U.S. government is preparing to attack another country not because of anything that its government has done or threatened to do to us, but solely because the president feels like doing it. The president created the current crisis by making reckless threats and then by ordering a massive buildup in preparation to carry them out. We know that he has been goaded into doing this by the Israeli prime minister and hardliners here at home, but in the end the decisions and the responsibility are his and his alone. No one can explain what the president wants to achieve by attacking Iran.” (02/19/26)

    https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/attacking-iran-would-be-monstrous

  • The Capitalism “Stranger Things” Runs On — But Pretends Not to Like

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Kimberlee Josephson

    “When Jonathan declares his artistic ambitions are anti-capitalist, it clashes with everything the show has relied on for five seasons. The finale demonstrates better jobs, bigger dreams, and individual agency rely on voluntary exchange.” (02/19/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-capitalism-stranger-things-runs-on-but-pretends-not-to-like/

  • Trump Promised to Drain the Swamp; Turns Out He’s Best Friends With the Swamp Monster

    Source: OtherWords
    by Sonali Kolhatkar

    “Attorney General Pam Bondi’s contentious House hearing about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files offered a clear message to the nation: Sex trafficking of women and minors is perfectly acceptable as long as wealthy white men do it. Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late sex trafficker, fixer, and political networker, was found to have ties to huge number of the world’s elites on both sides of the political aisle—including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, and of course, Donald Trump. For years, Trump’s conservative backers have attacked LGBTQ+ people, drag queens, immigrants, and others, claiming a desire to protect women and children from rapists and groomers. Trump even boasted that ‘whether the women liked it or not,’ he would ‘protect’ them from migrants, whom he slandered as ‘monsters’ who ‘kidnap and kill our children’.” (02/19/26)

    https://otherwords.org/the-epstein-class-they-are-the-elites-they-pretend-to-hate/

  • Maybe we should make ChatGPT less “WEIRD”

    Source: Sex and the State
    by Cathy Reisenwitz

    “It’s too early, obviously, to know whether LLMs like ChatGPT will make people more or less lonely on-net. In a new paper, (which I just wrote about) called Vicious Circles: Social Isolation and Poverty, my friend Michael Tanner cited research showing that some AI features moderately reduced loneliness in the near-term. However, people felt more lonely, more dependent, and did less socializing in the real world after heavy daily use. I think this matters because six years ago I wrote that loneliness is the biggest problem facing modernity. I have not changed my mind.” (02/19/26)

    https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/maybe-we-should-make-chatgpt-less

  • Tired of Dystopian Sci-Fi? You Might Like Solarpunk.

    Source: Mother Jones
    by Clive Thompson

    “I was doomscrolling again. It was a fall evening in 2023, and I found myself sucked into a stream of posts about our collapsing climate: droughts causing billions in Dust Bowl–style crop damage, Florida’s worst-ever coral bleaching, a record melt in Greenland. To distract myself, I picked up The Lost Cause, the latest sci-fi novel from author Cory Doctorow, a friend and fellow nerd. To my deep surprise, it stirred something unexpected: a feeling of hope. … Doctorow’s book is part of a sci-fi trend that’s gained traction in recent years, picking up on the threads Le Guin and Robinson laid down. Solarpunk poses a fascinating question: What would a world that had seriously tackled climate change look like?” (02/19/26)

    https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/02/solarpunk-sci-fi-books-literary-genres-climate-change-optimism-technology/

  • The CBO’s latest report and the choice between reform and disorder

    Source: Orange County Register
    by Veronique de Rugy

    “Despite what progressives have been arguing lately, the United States does not have a tax problem. Federal revenues, even after last year’s extension of the Trump tax cuts, are running above their historical average as a share of GDP. What America has is a spending problem so large that the Congressional Budget Office’s latest 10-year outlook reads less like a fiscal forecast than a warning label.” (02/19/26)

    https://www.ocregister.com/2026/02/19/the-cbos-latest-report-and-the-choice-between-reform-and-disorder/